GM tells me to make a non-combat character

This. Everyone in the party has a role. Maybe your character is a face while someone else is playing a beat stick who is there to handle fights. It depends on the game of course, if you are doing Pathfinder then you are fucked.

>pitch the GM a spaceship pilot and he okays it
>game setting is a few planets away from our vessel
>we won't arrive for at least 3 sessions
>the starting story has me be completely useless since all my skills are spaceship related

Thanks for wasting 4 hours of my life, chcuklefuck.

Are you OP? Is that that kind of system you are using?

This really only applies if you are running away from humans. A good chunk on monsters are either faster, more maneuverable due to stuff like flight, or have a range attack.

>GM tells me to make a combat character
>has unavoidable non-combat happen in game
Fucking liar.

Have you ever had a combat character die in a non-combat situation he would be good at if he wasn't combat oriented?

>unavoidable non-combat kills your character
I hate it when that happens.

To be fair this is partly your fault for being over specialised if piloting is your only forte.

>hey user, this campaign is going to be focused on diplomacy and politics with a couple of fights thrown in there.
>quickly descends into non-stop combat jamborees with slight talking breaks

Every fucking time.

I mean, I did tell him what I was going to do. The best he could have done is say something like
>Hey, you're not going to the ship for quite a while so get ready for other stuff
but knowing that I just want to make a superpilot and then not at least let me do anything ship related, is just shitty

Actually can happen. Don't take Swim, end up drowning in a flash flood.

Imagine in an imaginary system as example you are Gmail and a player says he wants to play a ranger type good in wildness.
You think why not the first part is in the city but he will get his moment to shine soon enough.
Suddenly it turns out that ranger literally can't do anything in the city so he just feels useless for several hours.

>flash flood
I know, right? I hate it when the GM throws flash floods at us. Happens almost every session and never fails to kill my character.

>as example you are Gmail
What if I'm Yahoo?

>swimming being useful, ever

>Are you sure you want to do that?
Yeah, but I feel like you've been vaguely frustrated with our choices lately, so I'll humor you
>Haha, it's a trap

It's just one example, shitlord. One skill, one situation.

>smug prick doesn't take swim
>knocked off riverboat and drowns
>HURR DAT DM

I know you.

Why the fuck would a non-combat character put his points into swimming? Why wouldn't a combat character?

I've seen a couple near deaths from swimming. I've never played a high seas or anything similar to that style game (but who makes a character for something like that who can't swim?). Climbing is another good example of a skill that can kill you on a whim if you suck at it (unless you're playing 3.5 or something where everyone just flies anyway)

Stupid question: does 3.5 have rules about flying underwater?

Why yes, that is a stupid question.

That is a stupid question. "Flying underwater" is swimming, and that sounds like a half baked argument someone would think up to try to get around having to make swim checks after they realized they have no ability in it

>3.anything
>expecting non-combat to work right

>"b-but you can die as a pure combat character too!!"
>all examples of such are either physical peril (something non-combatants wouldn't be good at anyway) or niche as fuck
I see where this thread is going.

>unavoidable combat
DM is cancer, GTFO ASAP

I as a GM actually killed a character via swimming.

The PCs were crashing a stormy sea when they ship was beset by a sea serpent. The PCs didn't manage to kill it and the ship capsized. At this point we realized one of our characters was elderly and had 5 strength and was wearing a non-masterwork breastplate.

With a total -7 to swim checks he managed to drown extremely quickly.

It was not the best unfortunately, the rest of the PCs survived however.

Fucking autocorrect.

Maybe I'm biased here but needing points in swimming just to stay alive in deep water is weird to me. IRL I don't know shit about swimming but I can definitely keep myself above water of there's not some crazy current pulling me. I can't be like a lifeguard or anything but I don't think I'd die from falling off a boat.

To me being able to swim enough to stay afloat in relatively calm water just seems like an innate thing every human would have and swim skill is more for rough seas or carrying another person or deep diving or something.

Happened to my party.

We went to a high class party. our resident combat specialist got separated from the rest of the party (as in, went to look for booze), insulted some important people, rolled terribly to get out of it, got into a fistfight because of that, got one solid hit in, was arrested and later executed because the party couldn't get him out because there were a lot of witnesses and the kingdom law is harsh.

With no skills points you generally will be fine in relatively calm water, you only need to roll a five to stay afloat.

We need more context here. All this talk about other characters getting killed because X and Y reasons is completely irrelevant to the OP's case.

What was the system? What was the setting? What were the circumstances of the battle? Why did the GM tell you to make a noncombatant? Were you allowed to flee, or encouraged to?

>We need more context here.
Do we really? It's a very common thing for pretty much every system you can think of.

>GM tells me to make a non-combat character
If a GM tells you to make a non-combat character, make sure your character can escape a fight.

It may hurt your optimisation of non-combat but you at least have a chance to run away.

Many games don't assume everyone knows how to swim, and swim check related deaths are usually not just from swimming alone but from bad swimming conditions or happening in the middle of a fight or something

>. I've never played a high seas or anything similar to that style game (but who makes a character for something like that who can't swim?).
What if the supernatural powers they took at chargen also take away their ability to swim?

Then this is the grave they chose.

I don't care for One Piece, but I'm pretty sure that curse is cheesed around more times that it comes up

>Be playing through the breach
>Ask players to make non-combat characters
>Three out of four are gunslinger with an academic with a pistol skill of 3
>Can't into speaking of words so always shooting
>Now they are in deep troubles with the law and graverobbers(Necroshits) want to zombify the poor sods
>either way they're enjoying their tour of chaos so it's all good and I'm wondering where this little shitstorm will go

>I'm going to try to escape!
>You don't escape. :^)

>take explicit weakness
>get angry if weakness ever comes up
I've had players like this. I got rid of them.

If your GM is a dick then you're fucked no matter what you do and it doesn't matter what the GM said beforehand.

One must assume incompetence over maliciousness. Next time, perhaps OP will know noncombatants still need a way of getting out of dodge. A good hide skill or invisibility or even a fog bank might have worked.

OP will never know, if they don't at least try to take those options.

>just run from combat
That not being an option happens way more often than I would like. I seriously can't recall the last battle I could have fled from with no consequence.

The problem here is that he was TOLD to make a non-combatant character. If you're playing a system, look at some sort of noble-type character and you like the sound of that then cool, you'll probably be useful. When the DM specifically instructs you that a non-combatant will be best and then suddenly he throws combat situations where your pacifist/coward can contribute nothing to the resolution of that's a problem. He's put his faith in the judgement of the very person who's designing the game and then basically been betrayed. There's nothing worse in tabletops than being stuck with a character you didn't want to begin with AND them sucking ass to boot.

>no consequence
That's your issue. Unavoidable combat is always cancer, but there's no reason there shouldn't be consequences, be it hit points lost to a surprise attack or money/rations lost when you dropped it to distract something that gave chase. There's always consequences, really, in time lost, passageways blocked, etc. That's the point.

>being able to swim enough to stay afloat in relatively calm water just seems like an innate thing every human would have
But this isn't true. Niggers drown in pools all the time.

If you penalise noncombat approaches, don't be surprised when players don't attempt them.

Traps maybe?

At least we don't have to read the full length pasta now

This. You're adventurers. No matter how smooth your talk, some people are gonna want to kill you. That's why there are other characters in the party who can fight. Only if the whole party are noncombatants is your GM anywhere in the wrong.

Unless engaging in combat holds a much stiffer penalty. It's not binary.

It's not so much cheesed as everybody has crew members that CAN swim to rescue them. Shit's all about having friends cover your weaknesses.

That and nobody ever fights on open sea, it's all going from island to island.

Usually, that's the players' fault.

It's usually the GM's fault, actually.

If the GM is a railroading shithead, maybe. Otherwise it's the group's choice where things lead.

>all my skills are spaceship related
What a shitty pilot!

There's a reason orators can carry guns in Final Fantasy Tactics, user.

>Le literally can't run from anything meme

OD&D provides rules for dropping food during a chase to ward off monsters (treasure in the case of intelligent monsters) for a reason. Just because shit DM's forget monsters aren't blind combat robots with capability for thought (and morale) beyond 'kill PC!' doesn't mean that's how the game works.

Oh get the fuck over it already. Your character isn't specialized in a situation. Well, time for some character development, see about devoting your character's progression to being a bit more combat oriented.
You died in combat because you weren't built for it? Whoopdy-fucking-doo, mate. Characters die all the time, combat, non-combat, npc, you fucking name it. People die all the time. It fucking happens. You make another character and you keep going, or if it really hacks you off that much, sit down and have a talk with your GM about it like an adult.

Bullshit. GM told him to make a specific character, then he fucked him over by using traits his character can't cover. That's shit GM'ing.

And ADVENTURERS in most games are constantly on verge of danger, so being "non-combat" is just stupid. Not optimized for combat? Sure. Built not to withstand combat? Blatantly idiotic.

>GM intentionally tells him to do something
>He does it
>He gets killed for it

Dude, take some deep breaths. Not only have you clearly not read the thread (and half the OP at best), you are far too mad for a story on a Taiwanese puppet show bored.

>GM wastes a player's time
>get over it
Fuck off.

I've made non-combat characters, even in combat-intensive games.

In the case that comes to mind, I made sure she was good at hiding and sneaking. If I ever got cornered in combat, that's what I did. Essentially she'd do anything she could to avoid a fight but if she couldn't do that, she'd do anything she could to avoid a fair fight. It worked pretty well.

Who the fuck cares about OD&D nowadays? Don't be stupid.

To be able to swim maybe?

Yep, sure showed me. I'll fuck right off then. GG.

You are wrong. You are not slowny, calmly submerging in water, you are falling into it. You have no fucking idea how to properly and effectively turn yourself, so your head is above water. You take some of that water into your mouth, it gets into your lungs when you panicked. You start drowning very quickly, you probably are going to die, struggling and panicking.

When you do lifeguard training (or Junior Lifeguards, in my case) they teach you that you never get too close to someone who's drowning, because they'll instinctively try to climb on top of you and then you'll both drown. That's why they carry those big red things.

Granted, most of the time if someone's in trouble it's because they've gotten caught in a rip current or something and exhausted themselves.

in a swimsuit/naked in calm waters, maybe.
fully clothed, it gets a little tougher.
middle of the ocean in very stormy weather?
you're gonna get tired and fail and drown eventually.

Anyone with taste. Go back to whichever containment general you crawled out of, preferably the subreddit.

Why?

Because it's rude to drag your cancer around out in public. You're supposed to lurk. Think of the face your mother would make on seeing your poor manners.

Thankfully, grognards have ceased to be a consideration for game designers a long, long time ago.

Yep, designing the game to maximize the appeal of running repeated sessions in game shops with no risk of frustrating or challenging the LCD market while encouraging as much player purchase of external products as possible - with entirely predictable and safe encounters, emphasis on bloated builds over play, huge power creep, etc. - is a much more desirable alternative.

As we see here, when the grognard feels threatened by an idea that is less than 20 years old it strikes back, baring it's teeth and displaying it's magnificent neck-mane.

Counterpoint - you shouldn't be an adventurer if you can't hold your own in a fight. "non combat" characters shouldn't even exist.

That's dumb, and limiting, and wrong. The original magic-user was hardly useful in combat, what with 4 hit points, no armor, and severely limited spell use.

It can be really fun to play an adventurer who approaches things in an outside-the-box way. Someone who finds themselves in situations for which they're unprepared and have to make due with what they have.

>implying I'm not a college kid who didn't nearly give up on RPGs altogether after getting a start in modern cancer
>implying there isn't an extremely productive community still producing shit for real D&D

kill yourself